Russian cosmonauts Kononenko, Chub to set new record for longest single stay aboard ISS

MOSCOW. Sept 20 (Interfax) - Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub will set a new record for the longest single spaceflight aboard the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday, September 20.

At 4:06:51 p.m. Moscow time on Friday, Kononenko and Chub will break the record of Russian cosmonauts Sergei Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin and NASA astronaut Francisco Rubio, who spent 370 days, 21 hours, 22 minutes and 16 seconds on board the ISS between September 2022 and September 2023, the Roscosmos Russian state space corporation said.

Kononenko and Chub arrived at the ISS aboard the Soyuz MS-24 spacecraft on September 15, 2023. They will return to Earth on the Soyuz MS-25 on September 23, having spent 374 days in space, according to Roscosmos.

Interfax reported previously that on February 4, Kononenko set a new world record for the most time spent in space, outpacing Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka, who spent 878 days, 11 hours, 29 minutes and 48 seconds in space during five missions. On June 5, 2024, Kononenko became the first person to log 1,000 days off Earth.

Kononenko, a Roscosmos cosmonaut crew commander, is performing his fifth space mission. After the end of the current flight, the duration of Kononenko's spaceflights will be 1,110 days.

According to official information, Russian cosmonaut Valery Polyakov holds the record for the longest-ever trip to space, spending 437 days, 17 hours, 58 minutes and 17 seconds aboard the now defunct Mir space station between January 1994 and March 1995.